Book-more libraries and book-less libraries #ist511

First of all, I am a big supporter of all the bookless libraries (one reason is that, I think different forms of libraries can help us better realize the nature of LIBRARY). There has been a number of examples and a lot of articles to talk about them in the last decade. In short, this movement (if you like) can be traced back to Fiedler Engineering Library in Kansas State University which was opened in 2000 (which is hard to believe, 2000?!). In 2010, this movement became famous because Stanford University's Frederick Emmons Terman Engineering Library got rid of most of its physical resources. After that, Applied Engineering and Technology Library in UTSA adopted this bookless model in a more radical way, which was called "the first completely bookless library on a university or college campus" (source: Library Journal). Another really famous example outside traditional settings is Khan Academy.

There are a number of things to be noted:

1. Most of the bookless libraries are college libraries.
2. Most of the bookless libraries are natural science or applied science libraries.
3. Only a few of these examples are truly libraries with no physical resources at all; most of them just remove most of the physical resources.

First of all, these bookless libraries are highly contextual. I assume that college students of natural science or applied science have a less reliance upon physical resources. Their researching processes are covered by databases and eBooks neatly.

Second, even as a radicalist in this term, I can think of how much objection the libraries will face then they make such a decision (I heard a lot of stories about all the objections Bird Library was suffered from when it decided to move away some of its physical resources -- BTW, when I first visited Bird Library this summer, my first impression was, why there were so many books!).

Library members love books. Again, in OCLC's "Library Perception 2010" report, after the economic failure, more American people connect public libraries with books. But on the other hand, people also love spaces. Prioritizing strategies in the local context are so important here. But all these things remind me of the tension between "meeting users' needs" and "creating new needs". As shown by iPhone and many other examples, users' needs are created. In most of the cases, users don't know what they need (they just know what they are using and how they like it, based on Atlas). So listening to the users is a dilemma. How do we take what we hear from the library members?

Let's put this topic in the back burner first. Talking about the public perceptions of libraries, in China, libraries are even more strongly tied with books. Maybe it's because "图书馆" (the Chinese word of "library") has "图书" ("book" in Chinese) in it. The connection of libraries and books in the language is so straightforward makes it extremely hard to change public's opinions about what a library is. 

Well, the previous statement may not be totally true. First, maybe Chinese librarians have not worked hard to change public's perceptions. A lot of librarians themselves believe that librarians are ONLY about books. Second, sometimes, Chinese people don't know what a library is; many of they cannot even distinguish between a bookstore and a library. In short, they don't give libraries a shit. Third, acquiring how many books each year is still one of the most important factor to assess a library and library director in China (yes, we have a national library assessment system).

In a word, most of the Chinese libraries are still going toward "book-more".

There was a very interesting news several years ago that, in order to have more spaces in the library, Cornell University Library decided to get rid of some repetitive collections, so they sold these books to Tsinghua University Library in Beijing (which is one of the best academic library in China). In the library I used to work, what we can hear every year is that, we spend how much money to buy how many books this year, how many percent more than last year.

To some extent, it's understandable that collection is still the number one issue in most of the Chinese libraries. First of all, as mentioned above, it's still the mindset of the public and some of the librarians and library directors that libraries are only about books. Second, at least in public libraries, people are still complaining there are not enough books to borrow. There are still strong needs for books In China; even in the biggest cities like Beijing, the lack of a functioning community library system makes a few central library working really hard but still cannot meet the most citizen's reading needs. There is hardly a robust eBook ecosystem in China, so relying on physical books is the reasonable choice. The widely adoption of book ATM machines in some major Chinese cities is one of the results of this environment.

But there is also another side of the story. Like what was mentioned in the last post, there is a strong need in the public for library spaces rather than just resources and services, especially in academic libraries. So it's hard for me to understand why Tsinghua University decided to buy all these books from Cornell. Even on the general level, more and more academic and even public libraries find it hard to have enough space to restore all the physical resources in recent years, like what has been happening in the US. Some libraries (like Peking University Library and many others) already have their off-campus repository facilities.

The situations on the eBooks market are becoming better, with some big online retailers and social media platforms devoting themselves to digital publishing and a number of public libraries joining this wave. Moreover, more and more libraries, public and academic, are using tablets and eBook readers as facilitator to learning, with pre-loaded digital resources offered by some content vendors.

With all these developments going on, it's expected that the "library-book" mindset among librarians will change in the future. However, more efforts should be put to change public's opinion about libraries. Librarians cannot wait for the public opinion to change; they should do something to make it change. The easiest answer here is to prepare for enough alternatives to physical books, and communicate our values to the public. It's not a short and easy process. Conversation is always endless.

Occupying Seats in Chinese Libraries #ist511

One topic one can read frequently in the professional literature as well as the news reports about Chinese libraries is the "occupying seats" issue. It happens mainly in college libraries: too many students need to use academic libraries as a space for learning compared with the libraries' capacities. In public libraries too, especially in the vacations, you can see so many students waiting for entering a seat in the library's learning space. I cannot say that the large number of population is the only reason here, but obviously, it is one of the issues that makes Chinese librarianship unique. (So I am kind of curious about how libraries in India are dealing with these issues, if there is any.)

This phenomenon, by the way, is one of the best counterarguments against "Chinese people don't use libraries". They do! They have a need for libraries, though they may not need as much of some services and resources offered by the libraries and expected by the librarians. There seems to be a strong need for library space in such cases. (On the other hand, unfortunately, the focuses of most of the Chinese libraries, public or academic, are still resources or even physical books. I will talk about this issue in the next post.)

On the other hand, a lot of students who get a seat in the library just don't study there immediately. They try to use some ways to take this seat and come back later. This behavior makes the whole situation worse.

You can see a lot of these amusing pictures online:

(One student used her coat to occupy the seat. Photo from: http://www.guokr.com/post/82085/)

(This time, it's a toy bear.)

(The queue of students waiting for entering the library very early in the morning, which is so not uncommon in China. Photo from: http://www.hinews.cn/news/system/2012/09/03/014900309.shtml)

There are a number of solutions to this problem, one of which is that, some academic libraries in China locks all the learning spaces, and they sell the seats to the students! This policy, as simple as it is, was severely criticized by some Chinese librarians.

Recently, Beijing Normal University Library (I got my undergraduate degree there) had a new policy (in Chinese) that, during certain hours in a day, everyone who wants to get a seat in the library must register in a machine in advance. If they leave the library, they need to log-off in the machine too. And if one is found to break the rule for three times, he/she will be deprived of the right to get a seat in the library for 30 days.

It doesn't sound like a very humanized policy because of the punishment part. However, I don't think this policy is totally unacceptable. It's interesting to know that some other libraries around the world are using this device too (like this Korean library). What makes me feel better about this policy is that, several days ago, the library tweeted a message in Weibo (again, Chinese version of Twitter) that public opinions about this seat management system are welcome.

Besides good management, at least in some cases, the problem in the library is only a part of the bigger issue on the campus. For example, in some universities, all the classrooms are forbidden to be used for anything other than classes. In such cases, it's inevitable that the library is overly crowded. The point is that, rather than just taking care of themselves, libraries under such a condition should try to do something to fix the bigger problem too (as early as possible).

So again, libraries should have conversations with all the stakeholders in this case. They should talk with universities to open all the available learning spaces on the campus. They should also talk with the students about the management measures and maybe about how they can find a space to learn more easily. For public libraries, one of the solutions is to establish a community library system, which also involves conversation, though a much more complex one.

Chinese librarianship is different with US librarianship on many big and subtle aspects. (for example, it may be hard to image the lack of space issue in the US libraries) However, even so, some basic principles, like conversation, can be applicable in China to at least ease the problem.

Some thoughts on classification after #ist511

As a cataloger, I have always been a big fan of "Killing Dewey", which doesn't mean that Dewey be eliminated from the library world, because that is both unnecessary and impossible. However, based on the local context, individual libraries should explore other possibilities other than Dewey Decimal Classification (or maybe Library of Congress Classification) or maybe find new ways to use these legacy standards. There was a great article published in the Library Journal in 2009 talking about some of the approaches US libraries had taken to deal with DDC and accompanying discussions. In some of the cases mentioned in the article, DDC was not killed, rather, it was reinforced or mixed with bookstore classification to become more user-friendly.

However, after that, the discussion of replacing/augmenting DDC has not been as active as I expected. Not until recently, did I read another article on the Digital Shift about how an elementary school library gave up Dewey Decimal Classification this summer. The big change in the library was because the librarians realized that "classification is really just a series of compromises that inevitably results in a less than perfect solution". As a result, the library adopted a much broader classification scheme, moreover, the new classification system "group books by how subjects are taught". Kudos to these librarians!

That is definitely one of the examples about "how library catalog can support learning" after this week's 511 class, in which Professor Lankes talked about theories of knowledge creation. I do think philosophical rethinking of classification as what he did is interesting. Though some level of reductionism and objectivism is inevitable and necessary for anyone to understand the world, approaching toward constructionism is good for both the libraries and the members. (Sorry for all these "-ism" words.)

Being flexible and user-friendly (or even user-generated) is always a solution here. Arranging resources by the actual use of these resources, rather than by the classification system is an idea worthy exploring. Just like the "virtue shelves" idea proposed in Professor Lankes' book, maybe a library can form subject groups (like tourism, cooking in public libraries, and anthropology, history in academic libraries), and letting these library members/experts to organize all the resources relevant to this area.

On the other hand, some of the great ideas mentioned in "Everything is Miscellaneous" written by David Weinberger may work here. With more and more virtual resources are subscribed or bought by libraries (Bookless library!), the order for libraries to organize physical resources (aka, library classification) will no longer be relevant in the future. It's not hard to notice the huge differences between the physical library shelves and online catalogs.

I was trying hard not to cross the line of cataloging and classification when I wrote this post. However, I was reminded of the "putting lipstick on pigs" discussion several years ago about whether OPAC 2.0 was necessary. In this term, I do feel that some of the "OPAC 2.0" solutions are awesome. (In case you don't know about the whole "OPAC 2.0" thing, you can see this presentation given by Mr. Dave Pattern. But on the other hand, even if you have never heard about "Library 2.0", I think it's totally fine, because people no longer talk about it. And people are talking about "discovery platform" rather than "OPAC X.0", which for me is basically the same thing.) But I totally agree that pigs with lipstick are still pigs. Like library website ("No one started their information search on a library Web site" as stated by the famous "Library Perception 2010" report), we should try to deliver our metadata in other platform that people actually are using. (Every time I thought about this issue, I was reminded of this blog post written by David Lee King.)

One revolutionary movement in the classification area is the linked data movement.  With more and more institutions publishing their subject headings/classification systems as linked data (like Library of Congress' Subject Heading and classification, OCLC's FAST and even Dewey Decimal Classification!), these former library-centered data can be used by a bigger community, especially by the Internet community to truly organize not only resources owned by the libraries, but actually all the resources in the world.

This vision is awesome, though much more works need to be done before we arrive there. One thing that I recommend everyone to pay attention to is the W3C Library Linked Data Incubator Group. This program suggests that libraries can play a really important role in tomorrow's Internet world. Libraries are no longer the only knowledge center in the world, but we can use our expertise and metadata to become one node in the new knowledge landscape, which is an important one and can make major contributions to everyone.

To borrow the famous sentence: library classification will be dead, long live information organization!

Censorship and Chinese libraries

My major as an undergraduate is history. It is interesting to be a history student in a country with a "long and glorious" history. But to be honest, I am not particularly proud of the "5,000 years" of history in China (at least, the number is what is publicized by the government and what is believed by the public). One of the reasons is that I subscribe to post-modern theory. As a result, I think history is construction in nature. Hu Shih, one of the greatest Chinese historians, once said that "history is like a girl's face, subject to makeup as one sees fit." Another reason is that, as what I can see, besides the glorious side in the Chinese history, there is also a dark side, which has been influencing the society until now.

One of the dark events is the burning of books and burying of scholars (I am surprised to know that there is a Wikipedia entry of this event) in the Qin Dynasty, which is the first and is also public seen a great dynasty in Chinese history. This event can be regarded as the starting point of the censorship in China. Here, I don't want to rephrase how censorship went through along the long history in China. But burning book is still happening in China, literally and metaphorically.

In Chinese social media world, people tend to have fierce debate about certain issues. Unfortunately, in some cases, these debates turned into personal attack. Burning the books is one of the ways some radicalists expressing anger toward some specific targets.

(This is a picture someone uploaded to Sina Weibo, because he is angry about the attitude of the author of this book in the debate between Han Han and Fang Shimin, which is a major social issue in China in recent years.)

Another event happened in 2010. In a "academic" conference about reading held in South China University of Technology, some scholars burned books which are seen by them as "garbage books". The issue of garbage books is more complex, because the quality of some of the books published in China is really low. But the point here is that, it's still our culture to burn books rather than to use conversations to solve a problem.

And what is terrible is that, censorship (a broader sense of burning books) is becoming omnipresent and stronger in China.

Michael Anti (a Chinese journalist, political blogger and dissenter) gave a speech about the recent development of censorship in China in TEDGlobal 2012. It's one of the most insightful and accurate descriptions of what is going on inside the Great Fire Wall I have seen. Based on his observation, the government's censorship and people's enlightenment are both growing, and they are having complex interactions in China. It's really interesting to see what will happen in a couple of years.

It should have been the stage for Chinese librarians, unless it isn't.

Last week, Professor Lankes talked about people should not ask "what is the future of libraries" in America, they should ask "what should be the future of libraries and librarians in a democracy". That's kind of the starting point of this blog post. It was this question that reminded me some of the difficulties of being a librarian in China under the omnipresent censorship, which librarians in America may not encounter, or at least these problems may not be as much serious here. On the other hand, just like my last blog post mentioned, people in China like to say "there is no choice" without actually trying anything. I also feel that we should not blame everything on the political system. Even though it's extremely hard to change a political system, we can do something to make everyone's life better, which, little by little, will eventually change the whole country.

Before anything, I want to share a number of stories I came across when I was a librarian in China.

The Chinese government has been banning a lot of books. Banning books are not unique in China, what makes things unique here is that you never know what books are banned. Because banned books are a sensitive topic which is highly invisible to the public even if you can find a way to talk about it in the media. This fact reminds me of a Chinese American historian, Ray Huang's books, in which he talked a lot about the different ways of the Chinese governments and the Western governments in the history. One differences he emphasized is that the Chinese governments has been lacking the ability to manage the country using statistics, thus they can only rely on moral principles and secrecy. In an environment in which even talking about banned books is sensitive, is threatened by politic forces, it's no wonder that nearly all the libraries in China have to take some sort of self-censorship measures. (Sure, another reason is that, like I have mentioned, nearly all the Chinese public libraries belong to and be managed by the government. And Chinese universities are highly bureaucratic too, which makes Chinese academic libraries' situations equally bad.)

In China, publication is strictly controlled. Every book to be published in this country need to be approved by the government, which means that libraries cannot buy unapproved book published in China, because these books hardly exist. For materials published outside the country, there is only one legit channel for libraries to buy these stuff, which is the National Publication Import and Export Corporate. I was a cataloger dealing with English books. There were several times when I cataloged books about really sensitive topics, like Dalai Lama, but in these books there were notes forbidding these books to be public accessible. There was another time when an organization in the US wanted to donate some English books to us, but to get these books, our library had to get permissions from several government departments and ensure that there was no book with "inappropriate" contents.

Another story I can think of is our library's public lectures. Public lectures are one of the most popular projects in our library. There are basically lectures in the library everyday, but lectures held on weekends are especially well-attended. Once upon, one of my colleagues who's in charge of the lecture project had an idea to invite a very famous Taiwanese talk show host, Kevin Tsai (who has the same number of followers in Sina Weibo as Barack Obama in Twitter) to give a lecture in our library. Because Mr. Tsai is also famous for his love of reading, so it'll be a perfect idea not only to promote reading, attract his fans, but also to attract the eye balls of the mass media. This lecture could have been awesome, however, it was rejected by our director. I heard the reasons our director gave to reject this idea were, first, he is a Taiwanese; second, he is a gay, both of which are kind of sensitive. So the director thought even if she approved this idea, the Bureau of Culture in Beijing would definitely rejected it, and may blame her for not rejecting the idea by himself.

Ironically, there is this "great development and flourishing of socialist culture" policy in China recent years. To achieve this "goal", a large amount of money was invested in Chinese public as well as academic libraries. The results? The results are interesting but definitely beyond the scope of this post. But in short, no matter how much money be invested, there is no reason that great libraries can exist in a undemocratic country. (To be noted, there are some libraries in China doing relatively better jobs in their relatively loose environments.)

As a maybe too simplistic map, Chinese librarians should give up their hope to rely on the government. They should be more brave to make changes, they should embrace the people, and they should try to influence the society more rather than remain socially aloof. Those are the first step before any substantial changes to be made.